Tuija Lattunen, MA
Doctoral student
Department of Political Science, University of Helsinki
E-mail: tuija.lattunen@helsinki.fi
Postal address:
P.O.Box 54 (Unioninkatu 37)
FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
Research interests
Politics as a Struggle over Imagination: Art and/as Activism
The research concentrates on the growing field of aesthetic activism (also known as creative resistance or culture jamming), formed by activists and artists whose work falls in between resistance and creativity, culture and politics, and art and protest. The purpose of the study is to examine the reasons for the rise and forms of this aesthetic-political movement and to create a comprehensive analysis how this field of aesthetic activism challenges our understandings of politics, its sphere, political action and its form.
Since the mid 1990’s a growing number of activists and activist collectives, especially in North America and Europe, have found the sphere of aesthetics and imagination as an important political battleground in today’s societies, where, as Robert E. Goodin has pointed out, “representations inside the head can count as much as representation within the legislative chamber”. Challenging the biased representations and the prevailing climate of imagination by creative resistance has become an important meta-strategy especially for those activists who want to change the face and practices of consumption, which they connect to various concerns they are fighting against (violations of human and workers rights, mistreatment of animals, environmental destruction, food risks, power of transnational corporations, pollution, climate change, etc.).
Creative protests can take various forms (visuals, anti-advertisements, street art, performances, happenings, events, etc.), but through the arenas created by the Internet (blogs, web sites, activist web galleries, email-exchanges) the individual and separate actions from all over the world are united into a kind of a “movement of the imagination”, that exists primarily as works of activist art. The movement’s concern with aesthetics has, however, often led to its exclusion from the map of social and political research. Whereas the activists see the realm of aesthetics as a strategic sphere for action towards social and political change, research tends to interpret it as a retreat, a form of escapism, and a substitute for real or effective political action. Often the use of art and aesthetic means are seen as mere embellishments or interesting details of the organisational field of activism and not as relevant objects of study as themselves.
This study argues that aesthetics is not merely the surface but inherently a part of the logic of action in today’s aestheticized societies. Aesthetic politics focuses on the conflict about the definition of the reality and the sphere of experience, and, by using aesthetic and fictional means of art, aims at creating dissensual spaces where this conflict is explicitly staged and communicated. It interferes with the aesthetic and aestheticized flows of symbols, representations and communication that have become powerful currencies in today’s societies.